Delusion Movie Review

Delusion is an accurate title for a movie that is deliberately reminiscent of many other noir films. Those films, which include Edgar Ulmer's Detour and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, deliver a lot more than Delusion ever does. It starts out well: a schnook named George (Jim Metzler) steals nearly $250,000 to save his ailing company, then drives his Volvo into the desert with the loot. Faster than you can say Psycho, George runs into a fruitcake named Chevy (Kyle Secour) with a weak stomach and a girlfriend named Patti. Patti is sporadically crafty, especially when craftiness will advance the plot. But George is always a schnook and Chevy is always a fruitcake and 100 minutes of these two tend to make Patti's cipher-like personality seem more complex than it really is. Jerry Orbach is seen in a brief appearance. So is Jennifer Rubin's bare chest. And so is a moderately intriguing plot twist that Patti and the audience know about, but not George or Chevy. Don't be misled, though: writer/director Carl Colpaert takes that title very seriously. Everything in his picture is a tease, from the spectacular golden landscapes, to the deceptively provocative emotional subtext, to the emptiness of the treasure that lies within everyone's reach and no one's grasp. Delusion is a film about hard-core losers living by rules that don't work. There is not even a minimal effort to supply the characters with depth; you already know much more about them than you'll ever want to know. Delusion's very emptiness may guarantee it an audience. But for anyone who really loves film noir, Colpaert's decision to tie up the plot with Lee Hazelwood's These Boots Are Made for Walking reveals Delusion's threadbare ingredients: something old, nothing new, something borrowed, nothing blue.

1991 (R) 100m/C Jim Metzler, Jennifer Rubin, Kyle Secor, Robert Costanzo, Tracey Walter, Jerry Orbach; D: Carl Colpaert; W: Carl Colpaert, Kurt Voss; C: Geza Sinkovics; M: Barry Adamson. VHS, LV, Letterbox